Good morning E,
I read this piece of boringly light chatter in today's NYT and have bolded the more bizarre parts:
October 4, 2001
THE INVESTIGATION
Will Suggests Suspect Had Long Planned to
Die for Beliefs
By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 —
Mohamed Atta, described by law
enforcement officials as the ringleader of the
Sept. 11 hijackers, left a will in which he
said he wanted to be buried "next to good
Muslims," with his corpse pointed east
toward Mecca, the officials said.
They said the will was found in a suitcase that Mr. Atta, a 33-year-old
Egyptian, left at Logan Airport in Boston, where he boarded an American
Airlines jet that later slammed into the north tower of the World Trade
Center in New York, possibly with Mr. Atta at the controls.
The will was dated April 1996, which would suggest that Mr. Atta had been
planning for years to die for Islam and that he wanted his final actions to be
understood as an effort to serve God.
At his funeral, "everybody should mention God's name and that I died as a
Muslim, which is God's religion," he wrote, adding that "everyone who
attends my funeral should ask that I will be forgiven for what I have done in
the past" — although "not this action."
The will was written in broken English. Details of its contents were first
reported by the German magazine Spiegel.
Mr. Atta was a student in the mid- 1990's at a technical university in
Hamburg, Germany, where he was seeking a degree in urban planning.
Law enforcement officials would not say why Mr. Atta's luggage had
remained at Logan Airport, where he transferred onto the American Airlines
jet bound for Los Angeles after flying to Boston earlier that morning from
Portland, Me.
It was not clear if Mr. Atta had checked the bag only to Boston — in the
knowledge that its contents would be seized by the police after his death —
or if he intended the bag to make the connection and to be destroyed in the
crash. The suitcase also held a five-page letter in Arabic offering final
instructions to the hijackers.
Friends and other students have said that while studying in Germany, Mr.
Atta underwent a profound change in his religious beliefs and temperament.
He embraced Muslim fundamentalism and surrounded himself with other
devout followers.
Also today, administration officials confirmed that weeks before the terror
attacks in New York and Washington, Washington-based supervisors at the
Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned down a
request for a surveillance warrant for a Frenchman who is now being
questioned in New York about any knowledge he might have of the
hijacking plot.
The man, Zacarias Moussauoi, was taken into custody in August after
officials at a Minnesota flight school warned the bureau that he was acting
suspiciously.
Officials confirmed an account in Newsweek magazine that bureau agents in
Minnesota had requested a warrant to review his computer hard drive but
that they had been turned down by Justice Department officials in
Washington. The Washington officials, they said, believed that the request
did not provide enough evidence to suggest a crime to support a warrant
under terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The officials would not confirm reports elsewhere that the drive was later
inspected and found to contain information about crop-dusters, which law
enforcement officials have feared could be used by terrorists for attacks with
chemical or biological weapons.
Earlier this year, the judge who oversees enforcement of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act complained to the Justice Department over
whether prosecutors were presenting enough information to the court to
justify wiretaps.
Government officials also offered new details today about negotiations
several years ago between the United States and Sudan in which the
Sudanese government offered to turn over Osama bin Laden, who is
reported to be the mastermind of last month's terror attacks.
The officials said the United States turned down the 1996 offer because
American prosecutors had little hard evidence at the time to use against Mr.
bin Laden. Details of the negotiations were first reported by The Washington
Post.
Mr. Atta's will made clear that he wanted his funeral to be carried out
according to strict Muslim tradition.
"The people who will prepare my body should be good Muslims because
this will remind me of God and his forgiveness," he wrote. "Those who will sit
beside my body must remember Allah, God, and pray for me to be with the
angels.
"When you bury me, the people with whom I will be buried should be good
Muslims. I want to face east toward Mecca."
There were detailed instructions for the preparation of his body before burial.
He wanted only "good Muslims" to wash his corpse, and he asked that his
body then be wrapped in three pieces of white cloth "not to be made from
silk or expensive material." He asked that "the person who will wash my
body near the genitals must wear gloves on his hand so he won't touch my
genitals."
Mr. Atta, said to be painfully shy around women throughout his life, asked
that women play no role in his funeral. "I don't want any women to go to my
grave at all during my funeral or any occasion thereafter," he wrote. "I don't
want a pregnant woman or a person who is not clean to come and say
goodbye to me because I don't approve of it."
Law enforcement officials say they are continuing to search for evidence
tying Mr. Atta to Mr. bin Laden, who has long lived in exile in Afghanistan.
During long, mostly unexplained absences from Germany in the 1990's,
officials suspect, Mr. Atta may have traveled to the Middle East or Asia and
had contact with followers of Mr. bin Laden.
Officials said today that in 1996, Sudan offered to the United States to expel
Mr. bin Laden and send him via Saudi Arabia or another country to the
United States.
At that time, American officials say, they had little hard proof against Mr. bin
Laden that could be taken to a grand jury. For example, they could not
prove then that Sudanese officials or Mr. bin Laden had provided training
centers for international terrorists in the mid-1990's.
Moreover, they said, the United States did not trust Sudan to deliver on its
promise, calling it part of a meaningless charm offensive intended only to help
Sudan get off the State Department's list of terrorist-supporting states. |
